


Thirteenth Night

by Quilly



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Brief Sensuality, Demon Deals, Demon Summoning, Digital Art, Ficlet, Ghosts, God Ships Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Haunting, Implied Sexual Content, Lovers of Valdaro, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Ouija, Pining, Racket's 13 days of Halloween, Spooky, Twilight Parody, Twilight References, Witchcraft, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:40:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 8,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27130562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quilly/pseuds/Quilly
Summary: morbidity and romance are lovers - racketghostA compilation of doodles and ficlets for racketghost's 13 Days of Halloween prompt fest.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 80
Kudos: 63
Collections: Racket’s 13 Days of Halloween





	1. Ghost Waltz

**Author's Note:**

> First, huge and humblest thanks to racketghost for the very nice tag they left on my Bones ficlet, which provided the tagline for this iteration of my collection for the 13 Days of Halloween spookfest! 
> 
> Secondly, all of these will be on my tumblr at quillyfied, and the art will be showing up on my Instagram under quillydoodle, which may show some variations in coloring and such.
> 
> Thirdly, happy to be here, let's get started!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just felt like something vaguely Haunted Mansion-esque! It was the show Supernatural, of all things, that first got me thinking about the idea of ghosts as people trapped in traumatic loops and patterns unable to break their cycles, and that thought makes me so incredibly sad I knew I didn't want to write a traditional ghost story for this prompt. A sweet, simple waltz above their graves felt much better, imo. I know they're hard to see with how I colored them; I tried for putting in a ghostly aura behind to see if that helped but I don't think it did. Oh well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quillyfied on tumblr and quillydoodle on instagram for more content (and the Halloween doodles will be going up in a batch; probably two at a time, since each doodle seems to have a million different versions. This artist thing is tough even when one is participating as a hobbyist).


	2. Bones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw the prompt for "bones" for today and instantly thought of the Lovers of Valdaro, which is an intensely romantic notion and I never want to be informed otherwise (also this is the chapter from whence racketghost made the tagline of the fic, which also gave me a case of the vapors). You should spare a google for them, they are iconic for only being discovered in 2007 or so.
> 
> (Also I knew I couldn't doodle this one even remotely legibly and I know where my true artistic talent lies so I thought I'd inflict fluff upon the high holy days of spookdom.)

“Crowley. Crowley, look.”

Crowley grumbled and snuffled and rolled over, facing Aziraphale in bed. Aziraphale, who was wearing a flannel nightgown and matching cap, and who was also holding Crowley’s mobile, beamed at him. Crowley squinted.

“What are you doing?”

“I was doing some research about—well, doesn’t matter what,” Aziraphale said brightly, “and I discovered the most delightful news story—look!”

Crowley took the phone and waited until his eyes adjusted to the brightness to read it.

“The Lovers of Valdaro,” he read aloud, then skimmed the rest of the article. “Morbid, Aziraphale.”

“Oh, but isn’t it just romantic?” Aziraphale sighed. “There they are, two humans locked in an eternal embrace—”

“Their bones are, anyway,” Crowley yawned. “Seems like a practical joke with a five-thousand-year payoff to me.”

“A joke!” Aziraphale cried, and burrowed down into the bed to be eye-to-eye with Crowley, who was studying the picture. “Crowley, really, it’s—can you not imagine how—how serendipitous it is, that these two young people so cared for each other that they were buried together, and even all these many thousands of years later, humans can’t bear to separate them?”

Crowley frowned at the picture. Then he frowned at Aziraphale. Aziraphale’s wide-eyed starry gaze didn’t dim a single watt.

“Does it not make you wonder,” Aziraphale said softly, “if perhaps...if you and I might not be afforded a similar fate?”

“What, to die young and be buried together?” Crowley snorted. Aziraphale took one of his hands and planted the gentlest, softest kiss on the back of it, the kind designed to melt his essence into a vaguely snake-shaped puddle, by Crowley’s estimation as he tried to breathe.

“If we might not be allowed to love so long and so well as to be remembered,” Aziraphale murmured. “If, when the planet is dust and the universe burnt out, if the atoms that make up you and me might not be bound together in the void for eternity.” Aziraphale’s mercurial eyes caught Crowley’s and shone all the brighter, by some trick of light Crowley had never got the hang of detecting. “If our love, as old as it is, isn’t still in the infancy of its infinite existence, and one day someone will unearth some aspect of us and recognize how deeply we cared for one another.”

“Someone will remember us, I say, even in another time,” Crowley croaked from memory, and nearly went blind in the face of Aziraphale’s weepy smile. “You’ve been at the poetry again, angel.”

“Maybe,” Aziraphale said, and snuggled into Crowley’s chest, cap and all, and Crowley held him and stroked Aziraphale’s cheek. “Perhaps we can go visit the exhibit. See if we knew them.”

“Unlikely,” Crowley said, his thumb swiping gently over Aziraphale’s lips, “but what’s the harm. Let’s go look at old bones.”

The kiss bestowed on him would have powdered his heart, had he not been made of stronger stuff. As it was, Crowley was hard-pressed to remain firmly corporeal when Aziraphale took the liberty of procuring a print of the Lovers of Valdaro for their bedroom. Crowley supposed it could stay. Skeletons were spooky. Big spooky fan, him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (The poem fragment that Crowley quotes is from Sappho and holy heckie yall, what a beautiful notion)


	3. Graveyard Romance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> C: "When we first met, it was an evening much like this. Magic in the air. An angel..."  
> A: "A demon..."  
> C: "An open grave. It was my first funeral."   
> A: "You were so beautiful. Tall and mysterious. No one even looked at the corpse."  
> C: "Your cousin Gabriel. You were still a suspect."  
> [...]  
> A: "Cara mia..."  
> C: "Mon sauvage..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So 1. I didn't read the prompt list very carefully before I made the ghost waltz art in a graveyard, I just thought that might be easier to draw than a decrepit mansion ballroom, and then I saw today's prompt and immediately facepalmed; 2. I recently watched the 90s Addams Family films and was once again struck by the deep need to make GOmens art in that vein, especially that absurd Addams Family Cemetery couch.
> 
> (I realize it's usual to cast Crowley as Gomez and Aziraphale as Morticia and believe me I hear you and I agree, but also consider Crowley being the one more likely to wear the skintight dress with the plunging neckline and long hair, and Aziraphale canonically sporting a (drawn-on) moustache and using a sword more often. Also Aziraphale's French is negligible and he could purr "Antonio" at his beloved in a low voice and every heart in a ten-mile radius would tremble.)
> 
> As always, also on Tumblr at Quillyfied and soon on Instagram at Quillydoodle!


	4. Vampires

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look. Listen. LISTEN.
> 
> I'm not apologizing for anything. But I will warn that this chapter is slightly spicier than perhaps intended (which is still baby's milk mild since I am Not A Smut Or Smut-Adjacent Writer) but so very, very silly. Incredibly silly. So silly, it just might be a parody of a culturally significant and controversial young adult vampire romance series.

Aziraphale Fell moved to a small, rainy town in the fall and opened up a bookshop.

The particulars were unimportant. The friendships he made, nice enough. The relentless, unchanging weather, dreary. The details of his day-to-day, insignificant.

The singular significant moment of note…the one he would write home about, if he had anyone left to write to…well, it was less a moment, and more a series of moments.

Aziraphale first met Crowley at the grocery store, where Aziraphale had been very innocently looking at the lackluster wine selection when he realized he was being stared at. Aziraphale had turned to meet the eye of his beholder, realized it was a tall, slender man dressed in black and sporting stylishly wavy red hair to the shoulders and impenetrable sunglasses, and blushed. The staring man’s mouth cracked open, dropped several unintelligible sounds, then snapped shut as the man himself turned tail and ran, full bore, out of the aisle.

“What on earth have you done with poor Mr. Crowley?” the orange-haired medium who owned a lot a few doors down from Aziraphale’s shop asked as she pulled the very white wine Aziraphale had been considering out from under his nose while he looked, gaping, at where the supposed Crowley had gone.

“I’ve no idea,” Aziraphale stammered.

“Ah, pay him no mind, he’s an odd duck,” the orange-haired medium smiled. “Safe travels, love, it’s icy out there today.”

Aziraphale felt as though he were being watched again in the frankly depressing seafood aisle, and turned just in time to see the whipping dark copper curls disappear around the corner to the next aisle over. It happened again while reaching for his third favorite hot cocoa mix, only this time his hand brushed against another hand going for the coffee directly next to the hot chocolate, and in the ensuing thrill up Aziraphale’s arm, he realized the skin of Mr. Crowley’s hand was ice-cold, though that thought was perhaps a little late in coming, what with Aziraphale being swept up in trying to penetrate the flat black lenses trained on him in order to see the eyes behind.

“My apologies, dear fellow, do make your selection first,” Aziraphale said. “Your hands are so cold, I believe you need yours more than I do.”

“I—it’s not—ggrk—” And then the man was gone again, without even taking his coffee. Peculiar.

 _It’s because he doesn’t like you,_ Aziraphale’s treacherous and overactive mind whispered, and Aziraphale hushed it. They hadn’t even been introduced; there was no reason for Mr. Crowley to dislike him, or to like him either. Ridiculous notion.

And yet they kept running into each other, all over the grocery store—at the toiletries, where Aziraphale attempted to introduce himself and managed to actually make Mr. Crowley catapult himself back into a display of diapers rather than shake his hand; at the frozen goods aisle, looking at ice cream flavors, where a better introduction was managed (“Crowley. Just Crowley’s fine. And you’re Aziraphale?” “I am, of A.Z. Fell’s Antiquarian Books. I say, Crowley, your eyes look very yellow in this light.” “Hgkk—”); at the bakery, where Aziraphale’s attempt to cajole Crowley into trying some conciliatory biscuit samples went horribly awry when Crowley announced he didn’t eat rather than partake in stale baked goods with Aziraphale; at the selection of magazines and books, which Aziraphale claimed to browse on a purely professional level, but even his embarrassment over being caught with a bodice-ripper in hand didn’t distract him from the way Crowley actively skirted the patch of sunlight from a window, going so far as to nearly do the splits to avoid it and keep following Aziraphale around. It was, however, just a bit distracting when Crowley teased him for his selection and resolved to call him “angel”, since he seemed to have an affinity for less-than-reputable romance novels featuring misunderstood devils. Aziraphale sniffed and asked him what he would know about it, anyway, and Crowley gave a sad, strange smile and said he knew a thing or two about being misunderstood.

Overall these things were adding up to a very inconsistent picture in Aziraphale’s mind as he bade Crowley goodbye and made for the registers. Any one of them could be dismissed as an eccentricity, but all together? It was unaccountably odd. Aziraphale pondered this as he trundled his groceries out to his car, taking care on the icy pavement. As Aziraphale made his slow way, he happened to look over his shoulder, and saw Crowley again, lurking in the shadows of the grocery store overhang. Unaccountably odd, indeed.

There was a squealing of tires and a sound of impending doom; a minivan had lost control of itself and was careening towards Aziraphale, intent on squashing him between it and his sensible sedan. Aziraphale had only a moment to think _ah, but I haven’t finished sorting my books yet,_ before he was thrown to the ground and his head collided with the frozen asphalt, not hard enough to maim but feeling quite concussive nonetheless. Even as stars swam in front of his eyes, he watched as Crowley, who had been several dozen feet away just a second ago, snarled and punched into the side of the minivan as its momentum threatened to topple it onto Aziraphale’s prone body. Not only did the minivan stop, but its side now sported a huge dent, the epicenter of which was a fist-sized imprint.

“Aziraphale?” Crowley said, and his voice sounded crystal-clear, even as the commotion of the gathering crowd sounded as if it were under water to Aziraphale’s ears. “Angel? You alright?”

“You stopped—you stopped the car,” Aziraphale murmured. “With your bare hands.”

“I—you’re seeing—shut up,” Crowley snapped, and was gone in a flash.

Aziraphale was escorted to hospital by the well-meaning orange-haired medium, Madam Tracy, and pronounced well enough to return home after about two hours. His groceries had kept well enough in the cold boot of his car, and Aziraphale sat at home in his bookshop after all the excitement, holding an ice pack to the back of his head and thinking.

There was a tapping on his window. His second-story window. His second-story bedroom window above his bookshop.

Aziraphale frowned, then set the ice pack aside to go to the window. He nearly shrieked when he saw the face peering at him through it.

“Let me in,” Crowley mouthed, and held up a wine bottle.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale scolded. “What is the meaning of this?” He opened the window and let Crowley crawl inside, then shut it against the bitter chill. Crowley, speckled with the late autumn sleet, dashed the ice from his hair and held out the wine bottle, which Aziraphale took and immediately almost dropped. This was far more expensive than anything in the town grocery store, and far more delicious, by Aziraphale’s reckoning.

“Apology gift,” Crowley mumbled. “And. Maybe a bribe. Keep what you saw to yourself and all that.”

“Crowley—this is too much, really,” Aziraphale protested. “You saved my life. I should be offering you wine rather than the other way around.”

Crowley shuffled and muttered and shrugged.

“Not to mention,” Aziraphale said, a thought dawning on him, “you had to go into the sun to do it.”

“Didn’t. Was cloudy,” Crowley mumbled.

“Not entirely,” Aziraphale frowned, and a second detail of the rescue came to him, one he’d dismissed at the time as seeing things, but perhaps… “Forgive me, dear boy, but was I mistaken, or did your skin…sparkle?”

“Sp—wot, now?” Crowley sputtered, pushing his sunglasses further up his nose.

“Your skin is pale and ice-cold,” Aziraphale said, setting the wine bottle down and ticking off his fingers, “you don’t eat, your eyes are an unusual color, you avoid the sunlight, you move uncommonly fast and are supernaturally strong…”

“Go on, then,” Crowley said, sounding resigned. “Go on and say it. Out loud.”

The word trembled on the tip of Aziraphale’s tongue.

“How old are you?” he asked instead, unable to say the word.

Crowley’s lip quirked. “Nearly fifty.”

“And…how long have you been nearly fifty?”

“…a while.”

Aziraphale was silent, letting the hammer of his heart fill his ears for a moment.

“Say it,” Crowley repeated, softer, taking a step closer. “What I am. Say it.”

Aziraphale took a breath.

He said it.

He was not expecting Crowley to burst out laughing.

“Angel, I’m sorry, red for a minute,” Crowley wheezed. “What did you pull this tripe from?”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale protested. “We were doing so well! I mean, of course if you’re uncomfortable we can stop at any time, of course, I just mean—”

“No, no, I’m fully prepared to admit I needed a moment just to laugh at you,” Crowley grinned. The magic of the roleplay fell apart. Aziraphale sighed and sat on his bed, and Crowley joined him, nudging him with his shoulder. “When you said you wanted to do a vampire roleplay, this is not what I had in mind.”

“It’s—modern,” Aziraphale said, doing his best to keep the slight hurt from his voice. “I thought you liked modern.”

“Oh, I do,” Crowley nodded, “but I draw the line at sparkly vampires.”

“Yes, well. It made sense in context, I felt. Immortal being, diamond shimmer. There was some poetry to it if you didn’t look too closely at it,” Aziraphale pouted.

“We’re immortal and we don’t shimmer,” Crowley pointed out.

“Yes. Anyway. That’s done, now, I’m not much in the mood to jump back in,” Aziraphale sighed.

“Go on, angel, we can stick to the classics,” Crowley said, throwing an arm around his shoulders. “Some good old-fashioned gothic monster nonsense. I’ll grow the fangs and crack open the cape, you put on the lace negligee and get out the fainting couch. How’s that sound?”

Aziraphale looked at Crowley’s hopeful face, then sighed again and tipped Crowley’s chin up for an exasperated kiss.

“Fine,” Aziraphale said, “but I want that wine after you feed on and ravish me.”

“Sold,” Crowley nodded. Then he leaned in and stole another kiss. “It was a good effort, though.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Aziraphale smiled, and smiled wider when his double meaning was caught and Crowley’s face flushed. “Thank you, darling, for trying.”

Aziraphale left the newer interpretations of the vampire myth to the youths. Classics were more than sufficient for him and Crowley. Though perhaps he would keep the idea of sparkly skin. Could be fun in another scenario, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen my Twilight book, it turns out when I went to scan it for reference, was just behind my Good Omens books, and I have a lot of Twilight soundtrack songs in my Ineffable Husbands playlist, and my Twilight phase was a lot of fun, okay, I have many, many good memories associated with Twilight. It seems fateful that I should eventually enmesh the two, when they're already weirdly adjacent in my brain. (It's the age old "Romeo and Juliet forbidden lovers" paradigm okay, I am the weakest sap for it imaginable. Humans and vampires, angels and demons, it's all the same baybee.)
> 
> (Maybe one day I will do a true Twilight AU. Next year. After I finish all my other WIPs. I am not thinking about it. I am NOT thinking about it. I AM NOT THINKING ABOUT IT.)


	5. Witch In Training

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen I was probably somewhere in the vicinity of the shower when this galaxy-brained thought hit me, and I wanted to see it through.
> 
> With apologies to real witches and occultists.

The idea to summon a demon was typical for a lazy Saturday afternoon, all things considered, though not having Adam around to dictate how they were to go about it while he recovered from the flu certainly made a change. As it turned out, Antichrists could fall ill, once they renounced their hellish birthrights in favor of a human existence.

“You want to summon a demon,” Anathema repeated to the remainder of the Them as they sat in her kitchen, partaking of gingerbread and hot chocolate. “Why?”

“Well, Mr. Crowley is one, isn’t he?” Brian asked. “Though he seems a tame sort of demon. We’d want to pull up one a bit more exciting.”

“One that could potentially chew up your souls and use your bodies as meat suits for its horrible friends,” Anathema said flatly. “It’s a bad idea, kids, I don’t recommend it.”

“If you help us, you could make sure we don’t do anything really dangerous,” Pepper hinted. “Like skin a cat or something.”

“Actually, you don’t have to skin a cat to summon a demon,” Wensleydale piped up. “And anyway, cats have a bad reputation for being occult already. We don’t need to play into stereotypes. If we do have to make an animal sacrifice, I would say we need a bug or a fish or something. Something unusual, to really get its attention.”

“That’s—okay,” Anathema said, “I might— _might_ —have a book on the subject. We can find a demon that’s really weak, do all the protective measures, and if it works, we send it back, no harm no foul. It doesn’t always work, even if you do all the steps right.”

“Won’t Adam be cross if we summon a real demon without him?” Wensleydale asked.

“He’ll get over it, he’s seen loads of cool stuff without us,” Pepper snorted.

“Besides, if it works, we can take pictures and sell them to a magazine or something,” Brian reasoned. “We can let him have some of the prize money.”

“If it works, we could do it again, once he’s better,” Pepper added.

Anathema ground her molars but didn’t interject. Because Pepper was right, with these kinds of rituals, it was always best that the children be supervised by someone who knew what they were doing; even amateur rituals could attract something really nasty even if it wasn’t a demon. Besides, Anathema thought, if she flubbed key parts of the summoning, the whole thing wouldn’t activate and the summoning would fail, and that might throw them off of any real summoning.

Heartened by the thought, Anathema fetched one of her darker occult books from her room and leafed through it. She was less familiar with demon summoning, it having never been a popular art with her family, but if she did a quick scan…there, that demon had an innocuous-enough name. Much better than “Abaddon the Destroyer” or “Arkhan the Cruel”. “Crawly” even sounded silly enough that it would be easy to chalk up to a cowardly demon not showing up. Anathema snapped a photo of the page she needed, then locked the book back up and returned to the children.

“First, we need a chalk circle,” Anathema announced, leading the group to her living room, where the floor was large enough for their purpose, if they cleared some furniture and the rug first. She pulled up the picture of the sigils on her phone, then made a decent-sized circle with help from the other three. Or, rather, the other two; Wensleydale was studying the picture intently, adjusting his thick glasses in a way that reminded Anathema of Newt and was weirdly endearing. “Then we need some symbols to acknowledge the cardinal directions…”

Anathema walked them through it at a brisk pace. She thought it was going well, right up until she started putting Crawly’s sigils on the circle.

“That one’s wrong, actually,” Wensleydale said, pointing at the sigil Anathema had just finished drawing and had definitely gotten wrong on purpose. “It needs an extra curve on the left, see.”

“I see,” Anathema said, and, caught out, corrected the sigil in question. “Um. Okay. Next we need some protection sigils, things to make sure the demon appears, then rules to bind it in place—”

“I think the one you just made for it to show up is wrong too, Anathema,” Wensleydale said. Anathema narrowed her eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“Looking at the circle on the page, it seems like the sigil is meant to have more of a straight edge on one side,” Wensleydale said, showing Anathema her own phone. “See?”

Anathema looked at the picture, then looked up at Wensleydale. Okay. If he was going to be clever, she could be, too. She redrew the sigil correctly.

“Get the salt from the cupboard, please, Wensley,” Anathema said. “I’ll finish up the circle, then we’ll make the salt circle to finish it off.”

“Why salt?” Pepper asked.

“Salt repels spirits and demons, actually,” Wensleydale called from the kitchen. “It’s supposed to be a purifying mineral, according to legend. Probably because it’s so good at cleaning things. My mum uses salt to clean out our black iron pots and pans.”

“That’s…that’s actually right, Wensleydale,” Anathema said, begrudgingly impressed as Wensleydale trotted back into the living room with the salt. “You’re almost a little occultist yourself.”

“Not really,” Wensleydale wrinkled his nose and handed the salt over. “I just like details. I’m going to be an accountant when I grow up.”

“Never would have guessed,” Anathema said, and began pouring out the salt in a thick circle.

“Is this really going to work?” Pepper asked, and to Anathema’s surprise, she almost sounded a little nervous.

“Maybe,” Anathema said, sitting herself on the northern point of the circle. “You guys go pick the other points. Wensleydale, pick the south, please. I might need you to keep an eye out. Demon-summoning isn’t an exact science.”

Once they were all in place, Anathema adjusted her glasses, read over the page from her phone again, and began to incant.

The circle did nothing, at first. Totally inert. A part of Anathema was displeased—she’d redrawn the whole thing exactly as depicted, including corrections from an annoyingly perceptive twelve-year-old. The rest of her was relieved. The chalk and salt was easy enough to clean up, and if it scared the kids off from trying it themselves—

An immediate thrum of energy ruffled Anathema’s hair, and the chalk circle glowed a deep, sinister red.

“I changed my mind, I don’t want to do this,” Pepper squeaked.

“Can’t stop now, actually, if we do it’ll blow up,” Wensleydale said shakily. Anathema didn’t get time to ask how Wensleydale knew that as a smoky miasma began to drift up from the sigils.

There was a room-shaking pop, and then the demon Crawly stood in Anathema’s living room. Only. He looked an awful lot like Mr. Crowley to Anathema. Wearing a bathrobe and slippers. Tartan bathrobe and slippers.

“What,” Crowley snarled, his hair dancing like flames and his yellow eyes gleaming as he bared his fangs, “do you lot bloody well want?”

“Mr. Crowley?” Wensleydale asked. The red light dimmed. The smoke cleared. And Mr. Crowley looked uncertain and small and almost normal, once again.

“Do I want to know why I’ve been summoned from my very comfortable bed when I have a phone and at least one of you has my phone number? Book girl?” Crowley rounded on Anathema but seemed truly encased in the circle, unable to walk towards her. He swore. “What the Heaven is going on?”

“The kids wanted to summon a demon,” Anathema said, her voice sounding strange and high. “I thought the demon Crawly would be an easy one, in case it worked.”

“Do you brats have any idea how lucky you are it was me and not someone like Hastur or Beelzebub?” Crowley cried, rounding on the three children. “Hastur turns into maggots and eats people whole in seconds, and that’s just for fun! Beelzebub would probably resort to torture if they were—hang on, hang on, where’s the curly one? And his little dog?”

“Adam’s sick and we were bored,” Brian said.

“Bored,” Crowley repeated, and dragged his hand down his face, though Anathema was a bit preoccupied with the hint of a bruise on the back of Crowley’s neck that peeked out every time the collar of the robe dipped a bit. “You three, I believe when you do something stupid, but I thought Book Girl here had more sense, at least.”

“Sense enough to not let them do it alone,” Anathema said, and Crowley turned around.

“Because no matter what, you humans can never seem to keep your sticky fingers out of what you oughtn’t touch,” Crowley said, though it sounded more like pride than censure in his voice. “Alright, you’ve had your fun. Send me home. And no more demon summoning, they’re not worth the conversation or the trouble.”

“Right,” Anathema said, and looked back at the picture of the page on her phone. “Wensleydale, you have to do it since you’re on south, just repeat after me.”

In no time, Crowley was sent back from whence he came (wherever it was, it smelled like dust and hot chocolate to Anathema) and the circle was safely deactivated and cleaned up.

“You should think about taking up occultism on the side of accounting,” Anathema said to Wensleydale as he held the dustpan while she swept up the last of the salt. “That detail-oriented brain is good for it, if we can just grow your intuition some.”

Wensleydale said nothing, but he had a thoughtful look as the Them took their leave of Jasmine Cottage. Anathema watched them go with a smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wensleydale: witch accountant is the spinoff I didn't realize I needed but here we are. Pepper taking up witchcraft? Cool. Wensleydale taking up witchcraft? Unexpected and surprisingly interesting.
> 
> (It can go right next to my Fred the Vampire Accountant by Drew Hayes book XD)


	6. Costumes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If Crowley thought he was cheeky by dressing up as an apple, he had another thing coming when Aziraphale walked out in his costume...
> 
> Two versions bc I forgot Crowley's diddly darn blush when I posted on Tumblr.
> 
> Could I have made this more detailed? Of course. Did I? No. No, I didn't. But I did the scale details on Aziraphale's waistcoat by hand and I think that's very sexy of me XD

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on Tumblr at Quillyfied and Instagram at Quillydoodle, for interested parties!


	7. Bonfire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Decided to try and play with shadows and light this time around and I failed miserably (please for the love of anything good at all don't look at the wine glasses, i don't know how something can look fine in a sketch and once out in the wild suddenly stand out as the worst things of all time) but I am trying new things, at least. Wanted to do something understated and cozy for this prompt, anyway. Tally ho!


	8. Ouija Shenanigans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Silly Town that veers unexpectedly left into Soft Town, which is apparently my brand. With apologies for the broad strokes on what ouija actually is/does, they're one of the few occult things I refuse to mess with in any way, shape, or form and even writing a gross misuse/divine hijacking of it made me antsy XD

“I’ve never done anything like this before, you know,” Aziraphale said with a wiggle.

It was October—of course—and he and Crowley were good and sozzled—of course—and on the subject of peculiar human occult practices, thanks to some tangent or other—of course. Crowley had brandished a Ouija board, and after some very convincing demurring on Aziraphale’s part, they were now seated on the bookshop back room floor, the board on the coffee table, their fingertips perched on the planchette.

“Bollocks, you possessed a woman once,” Crowley said around a burp and a rakish grin. “Full-up on occult, you.”

“Pish-posh,” Aziraphale sniffed. “Now. How does one make it go?”

“Gotta ask a question,” Crowley said. “Invite all the spirits and…whatnot.”

“I see,” Aziraphale said, and took a deep breath. “Hello! Ho up there, spirits! We’re…er…open for visitors.” Aziraphale frowned. “Unless, of course, you’re the sort of visitors that wish to purchase books, in which case you can kindly remain gone.”

“Spirits don’t buy books, you bloody great hoarder,” Crowley snorted. “Right. Got their attention. Now you ask a question.”

“Oh, I see,” Aziraphale nodded. “Erm. So. Do you…haunt here often?”

“No, no, no,” Crowley groaned, “not like—let me do it.” Crowley cleared his throat. “Are there any ghosts, spirits, or apparitions present with us tonight?”

Unexpectedly, the planchette started moving.

“Oh, good show!” Aziraphale praised. “I say, this is all very exciting.”

“Right,” Crowley grunted, though he looked suspicious, to Aziraphale’s pleasantly drunk mind.

The planchette settled on “yes.”

“Can you spell your name for us, please?” Aziraphale asked. “I assume that’s what these letters are for, yes?”

“Yeah, you got—hang on,” Crowley frowned as the planchette began moving again. This time, it settled on the image of the winking, smiling sun in the corner, just above “yes.” “Not sure what that’s supposed to mean.”

“Perhaps the spirit just likes the look of it,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley shrugged. “Well. Hello, smiling sun, I am Aziraphale, this is Crowley—oh!”

The planchette moved again, slowly spelling out a phrase, which took Aziraphale a moment to parse, but he got it.

“I…know,” he read. “I say. You’ve been here long enough to know that?”

The planchette moved to “yes” again.

“Riveting stuff,” Crowley yawned. “Here’s one, spirit, are you a servant of the Devil?”

The planchette zinged to “no” almost insultingly fast.

“Angel, you’re not supposed to be so obvious it’s you,” Crowley complained.

“Me?” Aziraphale frowned. “I thought—thought it was a spirit!”

“S’not, this stuff doesn’t work, s’just rubbish,” Crowley griped. “S’been you moving it the whole time, hasn’t it?”

“It most certainly is not!” Aziraphale sniffed. “I suppose it’s you moving it, wily serpent, and pinning it back on me to cover up your tracks!”

“It’s not me!” Crowley growled.

“Well, it isn’t me, either!”

In the hubbub, there appeared to be a steady tapping noise. Aziraphale looked down at the planchette, which had neither of their fingers on it as they argued, and saw that the tip was…tapping. Impatiently. As does a person’s foot against the ground when waiting to have the attention of their host.

“Oh,” Aziraphale said.

“Blimey,” Crowley gulped.

The planchette began to move, quickly now and without any interference from present occult (and ethereal) force. Aziraphale’s head spun.

“Slowly, please, spirit,” he cried. “My head’s spinning.”

The planchette paused, then spelled out a more deliberate phrase: SOBER UP.

“Well,” Aziraphale huffed, but did as the planchette asked. Crowley grimaced, then followed suit. “This is…highly irregular, is it not?”

“Irregular,” Crowley rolled his eyes, visible now for quite some time thanks to drunken sunglasses-losing. “Bloody weird, is what it is.”

THANK YOU, the planchette spelled, quickly but not enough for all present parties to have trouble following. I HAVE A QUESTION.

“That’s rich,” Crowley scoffed.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale chided. “Don’t be rude.” He turned to the planchette. “Please continue.”

The planchette moved.

“When…are…you…two…going…to…k—” Crowley made a horribly strangled sound as he read aloud the last word in the sequence. Aziraphale’s face felt hot and curiously disconnected from the rest of him.

“Bit of a cheeky spirit, isn’t it?” Aziraphale said, his voice high and falsely cheerful.

“Cheeky,” Crowley sputtered. “Listen here, board, I don’t care who’s talking, you don’t just—that is, you can’t—”

The planchette made an exaggerated circle, very much like someone rolling their eyes, and began spelling again.

“It’s…been…six…thousand…years,” Aziraphale read, mortified as Crowley’s bulging eyes fixed on the planchette. “Get…a…wiggle…on…already.”

The silence that descended was leaden.

“Can’t…” Crowley croaked, then swallowed hard. “Er. Bad. To do. Without everyone being…okay with it.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale nodded, his hands clenched tightly in his waistcoat. “Terribly bad form, kissing a chap without prior consent.”

The planchette began tapping its tip again.

“Oi, don’t you get smart,” Crowley snarled. “He doesn’t want to, so we don’t. That’s that.”

“Hang on,” Aziraphale said, and the tapping stopped. He barely noticed, now entirely focused on Crowley’s scarlet face and bare eyes, which looked panicked. “Hold on for a moment. Crowley, do you…do you think I wouldn’t wish to kiss you?”

Crowley stared at him. The planchette slowly rotated its tip to face him, as well. Aziraphale was less worried about that than he was about Crowley’s dumbstruck expression.

“You go too fast for me,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale’s heart sunk. “We might have started out the same, but you are Fallen. I don’t even like you. We’re on opposite sides. We don’t know each other. Stop me once this sounds familiar, angel, I’ve a million more on tap after all this time.”

Aziraphale gulped. The planchette retreated some, with the air of one backing away from a conversation with their hands raised in non-confrontation. Crowley’s expression had gone from panicked to resigned in the space of several breaths, and he rubbed his hand over his face.

“S’fine,” he muttered. “I don’t mind. I get it.”

“It is most certainly not fine,” Aziraphale said, and after a fortifying breath, he reached across the Ouija board and held out his hand, palm up, fingers extended. Crowley stared at it. Aziraphale flexed his hand, and tentatively Crowley put one of his hands into the waiting hand of Aziraphale. Aziraphale wrapped his fingers around Crowley’s gently, tenderly, and brought it up to his lips.

“I can’t erase how my words hurt,” Aziraphale said gently into Crowley’s knuckles, now happy that the infernal board had made them sober for this conversation, “but I hope it might alleviate the hurt some to know it was in the service of protecting us both, you in particular.” A passage came to mind, and Aziraphale squeezed Crowley’s fingers. “Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. Crowley. My dear heart.”

Crowley choked.

The planchette signed something frantically.

“Kiss now,” Aziraphale read, and looked to Crowley. “Well. Hard to resist such a direct order from a game board, isn’t it?”

“Rude, one would say,” Crowley said, and launched himself across the coffee table into Aziraphale’s arms.

It was a shameful and glorious amount of time later when Aziraphale happened to look over and see the Ouija board had been long knocked over and the planchette sent flying. Curiously, it was centered on a corner of the box the board had come in, on a picture of the winking smiling sun face again.

“Well,” he said, and returned to his present occupation, namely: kissing the living daylights out of his beloved, not at the behest of a bewitched board game, but simply because he wanted to and Crowley wanted him to and all present were quite happy with the arrangement.

The Ouija board was never quite the same again after its brush with divinity but that was alright. As Crowley said, it was a rubbish game anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on Tumblr at Quillyfied for more shouts into the void!


	9. Possession: Haunted Dolls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this one might be a bit subtle and obscure, but if you've seen Fantasia 2000 (which I haven't for years, I don't know why I remember this and immediately thought of it in the context of today's prompt), there's a story about a tin soldier and a music box ballerina who are in love. In the short, they're enchanted toys; in this, the story I wanted to tell was a little spookier and more about haunted dolls than magic adventures. There's a story here but I wanted to see if I could hint at it in a different medium. 
> 
> (Please ignore the toy box, I know, I kNOW. Also if anyone actually arrays their bookcases how I've illustrated, you are a maniac.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On tumblr at Quillyfied and Instagram at Quillydoodle!
> 
> (In my mind, theirs was a forbidden love; Crowley died in a car crash and then Aziraphale died of a broken heart, but it's okay, they can embody these toys and be together at last...right?)


	10. Urban Legend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You know kindly old Mr. Fell, right? Owns a bookshop in Soho? Listen, don't touch his books, there's some stories about things people have seen who have tried..."
> 
> I know the prompt was "legends" but I am strapped for time as Halloween approaches so you get something simple and just featuring venerable beloved Mr. Fell instead ("Stop screaming, dear boy, it's just me."). Besides. Urban legends are still legends! It's no "hand hook car door" but it'll do.
> 
> Few more days to go, wooooo!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr at Quillyfied and Instagram at Quillydoodle for interested parties!


	11. Haunted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "And all I see is you next to me, a ghost of you tangled up in my sheets [...] it's what I want, not what I need, a shadow of you that's been haunting my dreams" - "All I See", NateWantsToBattle
> 
> Had this one in the sketch dump pile for a while and thought it might fit here as something sad and strange depending on how you look at it. Pining Crowley? Of course. But who is he pining for? A living Aziraphale who just left? A living Aziraphale who was never there? Or perhaps an Aziraphale who is there no longer, nor anywhere else at all?
> 
> (Think "A Rose for Emily" and one horror GOmens fic I can't remember the name of nor did I read but whose truly sad and beautiful and horrifying illustrations I stumbled on, something something "Crowley saunters vaguely downward into madness" and is being haunted by a dead and rotting Aziraphale (or at least he hopes, because the alternative is far worse) for the one with the skull, it might be a bit too abstract.)
> 
> (Once again, quick and dirty and without even trying for shading today bc I am busy as all hell; maybe I'll try it again later, when I have fewer immediate obligations and my shoulder doesn't hurt quite so much from my stupid and bad drawing position XD)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr at Quillyfied and Instagram at Quillydoodle for interested parties!


	12. Finale Part One: Magic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the two-part finale of my 13 Days of Halloween submissions! This is gonna be some ridiculous silly stuff, believe y'all me. Warning for the most mild of implied sex near the end of this one, and maybe some mild body horror.

Crowley’s miracles weren’t working.

Well, no, that wasn’t quite right; they were working, but not as well as they usually did. At first, Crowley blamed the hangover from drinking all night with Anathema, but when the problem began to persist for days and even weeks at a time…well.

The Bentley still ran. The plants still cowered. The last-minute reservations still held, but at their last dinner outing, the waiter had sat Crowley and Aziraphale, not in their usual table, but at a booth. A _booth_. Aziraphale corrected the problem but the odd glance he cast Crowley’s way said more than needed to be said, all told. When Crowley attempted to turn the sub-par white wine they were brought into a full-bodied red, it instead became a refreshing rosé (Crowley had never drunk rosé a day in his life, though he might have to start, actually, it wasn’t all that bad at all, but that wasn’t the _point_ ).

And here, at the doorstep, where Crowley had attempted to end the evening on a high note by surprising Aziraphale with a lovely and spontaneous bouquet, there were _squash blossoms_ instead of ranunculus. Utterly unacceptable in every conceivable way. Crowley could have died of embarrassment.

“My dear,” Aziraphale said, tentatively setting aside the flowers inside the shop and drawing Crowley inside by the hand, “is…everything alright?”

“M’fine,” Crowley insisted. “It’s—totally fine, tickety-boo, completely toodle-pipping spiffy, or whatever it is you—”

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow.

Crowley hung his head. “No.”

Aziraphale took Crowley’s other hand, and Crowley did his best to stay conscious as Aziraphale’s thumbs stroked across the backs of his hands in gentle, soothing patterns. “Allow me to assist, dear boy,” Aziraphale said gently. “We can start with some general questions and do a more further examination as needed. Fair?”

“Guh,” Crowley squeaked as Aziraphale squeezed his fingers.

“Splendid,” Aziraphale beamed. “Now. Have you had a recent change in your diet or routine?”

“I’m not a bloody nervous dog, Aziraphale,” Crowley complained.

“Quite right,” Aziraphale sighed. “Well. We could always…cut to the end, I suppose.”

“Eh?”

“I could poke about a bit,” Aziraphale hinted. “In your essence.”

“In my—” Crowley choked. “At—at least buy me dinner first, would you?”

“Oh, I have,” Aziraphale said brightly. “Several times, by my count.”

“Ngk—I—that—”

“Crowley, if it makes you uncomfortable, of course I would never poke about where you wouldn’t wish it,” Aziraphale said, still unfairly holding Crowley’s hands and stroking them tenderly, “but I do want to help.”

“You can poke me anywhere you want, angel,” Crowley’s mouth said, without the sign of approval from Crowley’s brain. The flush that immediately engulfed his face and ears and neck were also unauthorized bodily functions. This would never do.

“Well,” Aziraphale, also decently pink-cheeked, said. “Shall we…go somewhere more comfortable?”

“Hggk,” Crowley agreed.

Which was how Crowley found himself with his head in Aziraphale’s lap, at least a century or two ahead of schedule by his count, and unless Crowley had truly begun to hallucinate, his hair was being stroked by those stout, steady fingers.

“This may be uncomfortable, dear boy, but do tell me if I’m looking where I oughtn’t,” Aziraphale instructed, and Crowley had all of five seconds to prepare himself to not pass out at the introduction of Aziraphale’s consciousness probe into his own essence before the deed began. He did not pass out, but the intimacy of it all very nearly did him in, as a piece of Aziraphale began looking about at his truest self and making deductions.

“All seems normal to me,” Aziraphale said after several tense, though far from unpleasant, moments. “You’re strong and handsome as ever, Crowley.”

“Shuddup,” Crowley grunted, clamping down on his own desire to make a reciprocal statement.

“No, I’m sure I can’t tell what’s…wait.”

“Wait?” Crowley frowned, then experienced a jolt, not unlike the feeling of finding one’s hair unexpectedly caught in something much sturdier and more immovable than one’s scalp. “Ow!”

“Apologies,” Aziraphale said, “but there’s…a string, here.”

“A—a string?”

“A string, clear as day,” Aziraphale said. “I can try to follow it, but it seems to just…trail off into the distance. It…appears to be a connection of some kind.”

“A connection,” Crowley repeated, turning his own eyes inward and seeking out where the shining watchdog of Aziraphale’s search was pointing. There it was, a reddish-blackish thread that seemed attached like some kind of demonic umbilical cord to the underside of his essence. Crowley’s blood chilled at the sight of it, though he didn’t fully understand what it was. Was it Hell? Something else?

As he watched, it pulsed, then swelled, ever so slightly.

“What,” he said in a gravelly voice, rough from holding back his own panic, “the _heaven_ is happening?”

.

Anathema was having a good month.

Drinks with Crowley had gone well—the guy needed a moment to vent, it seemed, and Anathema was more than willing to endure Crowley’s sobbing over Aziraphale in between juicy historical and occult nuggets of information Crowley dropped like a careless toddler. Not that Anathema needed more of a reason to hang around Crowley than that she liked him, but as far as friends went, he was generous with both his liquor and his knowledge and Anathema valued that in a demon (though her acquaintance on that front was limited to one, not counting the young Antichrist).

But lately Anathema’s work had been…flourishing. She felt better. More energized. Less in need of sleep, less inclined to drink her coffee and tea and more inclined to work on her charms and research. If Newt had noticed—which, in some areas, he was bound to—he said nothing other than offering a placid smile and the occasional “you’re awfully chipper today.”

This morning was one such morning, and Anathema was sure this was her third day without sleep and not feeling a single ill effect. She was hot on the trail of a certain piece of ephemera she needed to complete the spell to get rid of the snails infesting the cabbages in the village completely, and she’d almost found it, she was certain.

“Lunch is ready,” Newt announced, quiet and unobtrusive as ever, and Anathema nodded, her pen between her teeth and fourteen books spread out around her as she scrolled on her laptop. “On the table, when you’re ready for it.”

“Thanks,” Anathema said, and quirked her mouth when Newt pecked her on the cheek. Her hand unexpectedly reached out to grasp Newt’s collar, and before she herself had even realized what she was doing, she was kissing Newt with the kind of fervor usually reserved for more intimate, non-work-related moments. It all just felt so…so _good_. Heightened, almost. Newt gave a single, baffled grunt, but submitted well enough.

Later, wearing Newt’s sweater because getting back into her own clothes seemed like a hassle, Newt tracing patterns on her calf while she feverishly scanned her internet search, it occurred to Anathema that maybe what had just happened wasn’t entirely…normal.

“You have scale patches,” Newt said, and Anathema almost dropped her computer.

“Excuse me?”

“Just here,” Newt said, and tapped a patch of ankle that was definitely less sensitive than Anathema was used to it being. “Black scales. Is that normal?”

“No,” Anathema said, and hauled her own foot up into her lap to inspect it. Sure enough, there they were, black snake’s scales overlapping patches on her ankles and trailing down her feet. “Huh.”

“They weren’t there a couple of days ago,” Newt said, and Anathema’s throat bobbed. She hadn’t even noticed. Why hadn’t she noticed? What was happening to her?

“Anything else?” Anathema asked, knowing her voice was shaking but unable to stop it. “Any other scales, or maybe horns? Extra nipples, that you can see?”

“Extra—no, nothing like that,” Newt blushed, and Anathema felt another unexpected wave of lust rising in her alongside the swell of affection. “Why, what’s happened?”

“I don’t know,” Anathema said, and set down her laptop. This pulled the charging cable, which knocked into one of Anathema’s old teacups, which wobbled and began to fall. Newt dove for it, Anathema reached for it, and somehow between the two of them, the teacup ended up suspended in midair, with Newt blinking at it and then looking to Anathema, who knew beyond a shadow of a doubt she was making it levitate.

“What,” Anathema said shakily, “the _hell_ is happening?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the tumbles at quillyfied!


	13. Finale Part Two: Ritual

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be warned, this is some Spoopy Soft Town shenanigans. Thank you for sticking with me this spooky season, and big ole thanks to racketghost for the 13 Days of Halloween prompts!

“Crowley, don’t panic—”

“If you have an alternative, then by all means, I’m all ears,” Crowley said, panicking. “Because there’s a string in my essence and it just got bigger and we don’t know what it is, or what it wants, or—”

“Just…please, my dear,” Aziraphale pleaded, laying his hand on Crowley’s heart, and Crowley, who had forgotten about their proximity until this exact moment, made a sort of “ghrk” noise. “Please be calm for a moment. In the morning, we can call Anathema, and see if she might have any insights or helps on the subject. Modern witchcraft is ever so efficient, you know, with the webs.”

“Inter—never mind,” Crowley croaked. Calling Book Girl wasn’t a bad idea, all told; the strangeness hadn’t started until they’d met up for drinks, after all.

As it turned out, they didn’t need to wait all that long. Anathema had called them by lunch the next day.

“What did you do to me?” Anathema demanded when Crowley picked up the phone. “If this is some kind of demonic joke—”

“What did—what did _you_ do to _me_?” Crowley barked. “There’s a bleeding _string_ in my _essence_ and it is _growing_!”

“I have scales on my feet, I don’t need to sleep, and I just levitated a teacup!” Anathema shrieked.

“Now, now, everyone, let’s all be calm,” Aziraphale said, inserting himself into the conversation, and Crowley’s phone switched to speaker mode, the traitor. “Anathema, ever so good to hear from you. Could you start at the beginning, please?”

“About a month ago Crowley and I hung out for a night,” Anathema said, not sounding very calm, but Crowley wasn’t either, really. “Since then, I haven’t needed to sleep as much and my spells have all been doing really well, and today I just levitated a teacup on accident.”

“And Crowley’s demonic powers have been somewhat on the fritz ever since then,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley glared at him. “Most curious.”

“Seems like they’re connected,” a second voice said on Anathema’s end—what’s-his-name, the nerdy lad. “Is that normal?”

“I don’t think very many people are drinking buddies with demons,” Anathema snipped. “There’s legends, but— _oh._ ”

“Oh? What’s _oh_?” Crowley hissed.

“Oh, clever girl,” Aziraphale beamed. “I believe we got to the same conclusion, yes.”

“Well? Feel like clueing me in sometime this millennium?” Crowley snapped.

“You’ve made a pact of some kind, Crowley,” Aziraphale said. “And with a real witch, too.”

“My mom’s gonna kill me,” Anathema said faintly. “I think I set witchcraft and probably feminism back by about four centuries.”

“Oi! I am a respectable demon to make a pact with, I’ll have you know!” Crowley sneered. The phone, unobligingly, did not transmit the accompanying lip curl. Then the situation caught up with him. “Oh, bollocks.”

“What does that mean, a pact?” Anathema’s boy asked. “Is it dangerous?”

“I’m afraid I don’t much know,” Aziraphale said, and looked to Crowley. “Crowley? Any insights?”

“Not really,” Crowley grunted. “Far ‘s I know, demons and witches made pacts for power, the witch’s soul for the demon’s favor. But since I’m pretty sure we weren’t drinking blood or dancing in the full moon—”

“Well,” Anathema said, and Crowley frowned.

“Well? What’s well?”

“There was a lot of sangria,” Anathema said. “And you did dance on a table at one point.”

“Were you dancing too, because I’m pretty sure it takes two to literally tango—”

“Maybe,” Anathema said, and Crowley groaned.

“Given enough etymological loopholes, I’m not surprised,” Aziraphale sighed. “Well. This is quite the pickle. Anathema, we shall be there shortly, just let me pick up a few books that might be of use.”

This was how Crowley found himself in a passive-aggressive standoff in Anathema’s kitchen, where the two of them had been banished, while Aziraphale and Newt sorted through books. Normally, Anathema would have been in there with them, but given that Anathema couldn’t seem to keep her hands to herself or stop from making accidental fires whenever Newt did anything at all, her confinement was absolute.

“Is that part of being in a pact with a demon? Insatiable sexual energy?” Anathema eventually snapped. “Because that’s disgusting, if so.”

“How the heaven should I know? I’ve never been in one before,” Crowley griped.

“Well, are you feeling it, too?”

“Always,” Crowley muttered, then slapped his hand over his mouth. That had to stop, too, frankly. “Augh.”

“Still no closer to solving your angel problem, then?” Anathema asked, still cold but slightly warmer than before.

“I’ll have you know he had his hands on me for nearly an entire hour last night,” Crowley sniffed. Anathema rolled her eyes.

“Maybe your pent-up longing is impacting me somehow,” Anathema muttered. Crowley threw her a rude hand gesture and slumped into his arms on the table.

“Have fun with it, might do you and Newt more good than it ever did me,” Crowley mumbled. “Useless bloody feelings.”

Anathema said nothing but the friendly elbow-pat said plenty. Though, Crowley noticed some scales were popping up on the backs of her hands now, and that was just horrible to see. He snapped his fingers to see if he could make them disappear, and instead managed to manifest a wooden spoon in her hand not out of place with a cauldron.

“Miracles are still all screwy,” Crowley grunted as Anathema glared and set the spoon down. “Hope they find something soon.”

“Aha! We have something!” Aziraphale called from the living room, and Crowley and Anathema managed to wedge each other into the kitchen doorway in their haste to exit, their limbs thrashing none too gently. Once they were both standing in the living room, pointedly not looking at each other, Aziraphale cleared his throat.

“Newton found it,” Aziraphale said, and adjusted his useless adorable glasses. “It seems that witches with strong connections to their demon patrons take on more and more of their physical aspects, until they become indistinguishable and then subsumed.”

“Oh,” Anathema said, looking green.

“How do we make it stop?” Crowley hissed. “Don’t want any minions or subsumed people inside of me, please.”

“Well, we have to break the pact,” Newt said, matter-of-fact. “Or declare it fulfilled, somehow.”

“That implies there were terms to the pact,” Anathema frowned.

“Well, only you two would know,” Aziraphale said. “Whatever were you talking about, when you made it?”

Crowley felt the blood drain from his face. Anathema massaged her temples.

“Let me get this straight,” Anathema said through gritted teeth. “The only way to be rid of this is if I help him with—with what we were discussing?”

“Well, in a regular sense, the witch is the supplicant to the demon and needs her wishes fulfilled in exchange for power,” Aziraphale said, tapping his chin, “but I suppose it could work the other way, as well, if you can think of nothing you would ask a demon for.”

“Well, I can think of one thing,” Anathema said darkly, and looked at Crowley with a piercing eye that was starting to get the barest of yellowish tinges. “Do you remember? Or am I going to have to take care of it myself?”

“No,” Crowley croaked, then cleared his throat. “No, no, I…I remember.”

“Okay, then, let’s get a move on, before I turn into you,” Anathema shuddered.

“Do we need to set anything up?” Newt asked.

“Might as well get it over with,” Crowley said, and for several seconds, psyched himself up to do just that. He looked at Aziraphale—with his round earnest face and his backlit halo hair and his eyes and his nose and those criminally perfect lips and rolls and creases—and his heart escaped up into his throat. “Haugh.”

“Try again,” Anathema said tightly.

Crowley swallowed. He coughed. He fidgeted.

“Sssssometime today!” Anathema cried, then swore. “Ow! Before the fangs finish growing in, please!”

“Alright, alright!” Crowley snapped, then took two steps towards Aziraphale, who looked up at him, puzzled.

“What is it, Crowley? What do you need?”

“You,” Crowley breathed, and could have bitten off his entire forked tongue in that moment as Aziraphale’s eyes grew large and round. “I mean. Um. Look, this isn’t how I wanted it to—”

“If you don’t tell him, I swear I will give you indigestion for an entire decade and it will never stop,” Anathema threatened. “That’s what I asked you to do, when we were done with the sangria and the dancing. To just _tell him how you feel_.”

“I’m getting to it, alright?” Crowley snarled over his shoulder. There was a gentle touch on his cheek, rotating his face back around.

“What did you want to tell me, my dearest?” Aziraphale asked quietly, and Crowley gulped.

“M’ in love with you,” Crowley mumbled, and tried not to think about how, if he moved his face just so, exactly whose hand he would be touching with his mouth. “Have been. For a while. For. For ever, pretty much, only it’s—it’s not a big deal, it’s—”

“I very much beg to differ,” Aziraphale said, still quiet. “Tell me. All of it. All of how you feel.”

“I—” Crowley swallowed hard. “God and Satan and everybody in between, Aziraphale, I stopped time for you at least twice and one of those times in front of my actual, literal boss. I begged you to run away with me. I saved your bloody books, I followed you around everywhere begging for you to want to try new wines and experiment with mollusks with me, I—I just want to be with you. However you’ll have me, whatever way you want, I want it, too, just—just don’t send me away, let me be here, be close. To you. Always.” Crowley was aware he was babbling and that it was supremely uncool, particularly in the company of two humans, but the soft dawn of Aziraphale’s smile and the sunshine of his eyes was burning away any and all reservations Crowley still had within him. “Just. Thought you might want to know. That I love you.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Aziraphale said, still so quiet, so gentle. His thumb traced over the outline of Crowley’s upper lip and without Crowley’s say-so his eyes fluttered shut. “As it happens, I also love you terribly.”

There was a pop, a crash, and a whoosh of air.

At first, Crowley thought that had all been him—he thought maybe his heart had finally burst from his chest.

A second, more rational look told him it was Anathema, looking disheveled but back to normal, and Newt, knocking over a coffee cup in his haste to run to Anathema’s side.

“I told you,” Anathema said, sounding winded. “Next time, just take my advice. Idiot.”

“Right,” Crowley said, and might have wanted to say more, but such things were unimportant, with Aziraphale’s hand slipping into his own.

“Is it over?” Newt asked hopefully.

“Oh, I think it’s only just begun,” Aziraphale said, and though it was in the last place on Earth Crowley would ever have picked for it, he would never have dreamed of stopping Aziraphale from turning Crowley’s face towards him and kissing him quite firmly.

The rush out of Anathema’s house was a blur to Crowley. Phone lines might have been involved, or perhaps a direct teleportation. Regardless, quite a lot of time later, with Crowley staring blankly up at the ceiling of Aziraphale’s bookshop and tracing aimless circles into Aziraphale’s soft back as Aziraphale caught a rare nap while snuggled up to him, Crowley had to admit that maybe witches did know what they were on about after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr at Quillyfied, for interested parties.


End file.
